Open Forum

FETP Ankaleshwar Letter to the Secretary, Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC), Government of India, seeking cancellation of the Consolidated Consent and Authorization (CC & A) and issue closure notice to Narmada Clean Tech (NCT), Ankleshwar, as the Final Effluent Treatment Plant’ (FETP) consistently does not meet the prescribed GPCB norms since its inception by Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti’s Rohit Prajapati and Krishnakant: We are writing letters since 2008 onwards about the Final Effluent Treatment Plant (FETP) of Narmada Clean Tech of Ankleshwar (NCT) which is not able to meet the prescribed norms of GPCB since its inception is publicly well known. We had again taken up this issue of non-compliance with you in our letter dated 12 December 2016 but there is no-response from your office as if silence is your reply or silence is your commitment to the environment. In such circumstances, we request that the MoEFCC and the GPCB to enlighten us with the law unde

By Venkatesh Nayak* The Government of India is seeking to amend the Income Tax Act, 1961 to make it compulsory for taxpayers to have Aadhaar for filing income tax returns (IT returns). If the Aadhaar number or an Aadhaar enrolment number is not provided by a taxpayer at the time of filing IT returns, after 01 July, 2017, the Permanent Account Number (PAN) will be treated as invalid. At the time of writing this email alert, the text of this amendment proposal was not uploaded on the websites of the Lok Sabha or the Ministry of Finance. Amendment proposal extends the scope of Aadhaar beyond Aadhaar Act, 2016 The proposed move to amend the Income Tax Act to make Aadhaar compulsory for filing IT returns goes completely against what is said in the Aadhaar Act, 2016 . That law is meant for targeted subsidies and payments made out of the Consolidated Fund of India. The income tax that we taxpayers pay is credited into the Consolidated Fund of India . In order to escape this contradiction the

By Venkatesh Nayak* The J&K Right to Information Act (J&K RTI Act) entered its 9th year of implementation on March 20, 2017. A Rapid Study of the official websites of 230 public authorities under the J&K Government conducted by J&K RTI Movement and CHRI reveals that compliance with the requirement of proactive disclosure of information under Section 4(1)(b) of the J&K RTI Act remains poor. Key findings from this Rapid Study are given below. J&K RTI Movement and CHRI are discussing these findings in order to identify practical recommendations for improving compliance with Section 4(1)(b) of the J&K RTI Act, today (20 March, 2017) at the Institute of Management, Public Administration and Rural Development (IMPA), Srinagar. What is proactive information disclosure under Section 4 of the J&K RTI Act? Section 4(1)(b) of the J&K RTI Act makes it compulsory for all public authorities to place a wealth of information in the public domain. This includes deta

By Venkatesh Nayak* The Central Information Commission has published the Annual Report for 2015-16 regarding the implementation of The Right to Information Act, 2005 (RTI Act). This Annual Report (AR) may be accessed on its website. I thank Commodore (retd.) Lokesh Batra for alerting us about the publication of this AR on the CIC’s website. Our quick analysis of the statistics and issues highlighted in the Annual Report is given below. Central Government- Overall RTI Trends for 2015-16 1) During the reporting year 2015-16 9.76 lakh RTI applications were said to have been received by the registered public authorities (PAs). This is 2.21 lakhs or 22.67% more RTI applications received than what was reported during 2014-15. However in 2014-15 almost a quarter of the registered PAs failed to submit their RTI stats. Only 75.27% of the PAs reported their RTI stats to the CIC. So the data for 2015-16 indicates that the number of RTIs filed with the PAs in GoI continues to display a plateauing

By Venkatesh Nayak* The Government appointed Independent Freedom of Information Commission (FOI Commission) in the United Kingdom (UK) has completed its work and released its report . Significantly, it has not called for any amendment to the transparency law that will put more discretion in the hands of bureaucrats and Ministers to withhold access to information of public interest. Instead it has recommended changes to the law and codes of practice to smoothen the implementation process. Readers will remember, the UK enacted the Freedom of Information Act (FoI Act) in 2000 and implemented it fully 2005 onwards, a little before the Indian RTI Act was operationalised. The then Prime Minister, Mr. Tony Blair whose government moved the FOI Bill in Parliament, recently, berated himself over that decision in his memoirs calling himself an ‘imbecile’ and a ‘nincompoop’, amongst other things. While many may disagree with his rating of himself (regarding this decision), such candid assessment